Jacquie, who attends a professional conference in Albuquerque while struggling to maintain an eleven-day sobriety streak, reconnects with Harvey, the father of the child she gave up for adoption long ago, and agrees to travel with him to Oakland to attend the powwow. Calvin, who is on the powwow committee, provides the group with valuable inside information. Interwoven with these central stories are the tales of a number of other individuals who are interconnected in unlikely and amazing ways-though they are often unaware of the deep ties, both cultural and familial, which bind them to one another.Īs the powwow nears, Octavio plots with Calvin Johnson, Calvin’s brother Charles, and Charles’s friend Carlos-along with Tony Loneman, who Octavio hopes will take the fall for the crime-about how to steal tens of thousands of dollars in cash prizes from the powwow.
Also present are Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield, her half-sister Jacquie Red Feather, and Jacquie’s culturally adrift grandchildren Orvil, Lony, and Loother, who all struggle to understand one another, and the complicated cultural tradition they’re a part of. Among the attendees of the powwow are the lost and insecure Tony Loneman, a young man whose shame over having a face marked by fetal alcohol syndrome leads to his involvement in a scheme to rob the powwow Octavio Gomez, a drug dealer and the mastermind behind the scheme and Dene Oxendene, who’s hoping to honor his recently deceased uncle’s legacy by collecting the stories of other Native Americans living in Oakland for a documentary film. In the weeks leading up to the Big Oakland Powwow, a disparate but interconnected group of urban Native Americans living in Oakland prepare for the festivities, working through the losses and traumas they’ve suffered both in their own lifetimes and through the inheritance of an overwhelmingly painful cultural legacy of violence and racism. Part IV: Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield (5).
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